The blog spot From THE Bookshelf
Posted May 3, 2012 at www.huffingtompost.com/kent-nerburn/cabride_b_1474147.html

The cab ride I’ll never forget.
There was a time in my life twenty years ago when I was
driving a cab for a living on the night shift. I encountered
people whose lives amazed me, ennobled me, made me laugh
and made me weep. And none
of those lives touched me more
than that of a woman I picked
up late on a warm August night.
I was responding to a call in a
quiet part of town. I assumed I
was being sent to pick up some
partiers, or someone who had
just had a fight with a lover, or someone going off to an early
shift at some factory for the industrial part of town.
When I arrived at the address, the building was dark except
for a single light in a ground-floor window. Many drivers would
just honk once or twice, wait a short minute, then drive away.
Too many bad possibilities awaited a driver who went to a
darkened building at 2:30 a.m.
But I had seen too many people trapped in a life of poverty
who depended on the cab as their only means of transportation.
Unless a situation had a real whiff of danger, I always went to
the door to find the passenger. It might, I reasoned, be someone
who needs my assistance.
So I walked to the door and knocked.
“Just a minute,” answered a frail and elderly voice. I could
hear the sound of something being dragged across the
floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman
somewhere in her 80s stood before me. She was wearing a print
dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like you might
see in a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The
sound had been her dragging it across the floor.
The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years.
All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks
on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the
corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.
“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she said. “I’d like a
few moments alone. Then, if you could come back and help me?
I’m not very strong.”
I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the
woman. She took my arm, and we walked slowly toward the
curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness.
“You’re such a good boy,” she said. Her praise and
appreciation were almost embarrassing. When we got in the cab,
she gave me an address, then asked, “Could you drive through
downtown?”
“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way
to a hospice.”
I looked in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were glistening. “I
don’t have any family left,” she continued. “The doctor says I
should go there. He says I don’t have very long.”
I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. “What route
would you like me to go?” I asked.
For the next two hours we drove through the city. She showed
me the building where she had once worked as an elevator
operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and
her husband had lived when they had first been married. She
had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had
once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.
Sometimes she would have me slow in front of a particular
building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness,
saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she
suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.”
We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a
low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway
that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab
as soon as we pulled up. Without waiting for me, they opened
the door and began assisting the woman. They were solicitous
and intent, watching her every move. They must have been

It was the sound

of a life closing.

Please see CAB RIDE page 13

In a perfect world, nobody
would need this book. It would
be ranked #9,791,463 in Amazon
sales.
Wait! Stop the presses. That
was the lead paragraph in our
book review two weeks ago.
But strangely enough, it fits
yet again, and that can mean
but one thing: we still live in an
imperfect world.
Unfortunately, we all have
first-hand experience in how
very imperfect our world can
be. Despite all the grandeur and
love and beauty surrounding us,
there are also enough poisonous
people to make a book like The
Law of the Garbage Truck valuable,
if not absolutely necessary. The
sub-title, after all, is “How to
Respond to People Who Dump on
You, and How to Stop Dumping on
Others.”
We all know — or have to
regularly deal with — people
who are determined to spread
their hatred and negativity
all over anyone within reach.
Sometimes the dumping is fairly
mild, other times it’s really,
really nasty. Very few people are
immune.
There are doctors and nurses
reading this who deal with
unreasonable and demanding
patients and their families every

single day, all day long.
Some people work in retail
and food service, and these
clerks’ and waiters’ jobs is
waiting hand and foot on often
rude and unappreciative people
every single day, all day long.
Others spend 40 hours a week
in the real-life version of Horrible
Bosses. Every single day, all day
long, someone with hiring and
firing power over them dumps
on them.
Cops? Let’s not even get
started on what they have to put
up with every day.
For any of these people,
retaliation could be a direct route
to unemployment, bankruptcy,
and homelessness, yet it can look
more appealing every day.
Not that the “deserving”

person gets the return dumpage.
No, we might take the poison
from the boss or that rude
client or customer and give it to
unsuspecting fellow workers,
our wife or husband, our kids,
and even total strangers.
As the old saying goes,
nothing helps a bad mood like
spreading it around.
One antidote to the everescalating erosion of civility is
David Pollay’s best-selling book.
As its name suggests, its pages
don’t contain principles; these
are laws, and as such, they carry
weight. Serious consequences
come from breaking them, so
those who read this book are not
casual about compliance. That’s
important because the dumpers
in your life obviously haven’t
read The Law yet and will
continue to dump.
The challenge? Be the
inevitable victim of a dumping,
stay happy in spite of it, and
refuse to dump in retaliation.
Are you able to do that?
Perhaps not until after you’ve
read The Law. There’s certainly
no denying the need. +

The Law of the Garbage Truck
by David J. Pollay, 256 pages,
published Oct. 5, 2010 by Sterling
Press

the

Clipping
File
Ground-breaking study
An Alzheimer’s prevention
study The New York Times
describes as “unprecedented” has
been given the green light.
It’s the first to focus on
preventing the disease among
people before they develop
any symptoms, but who
are guaranteed to develop
Alzheimer’s.
It sounds like Tuskegee all
over again, doesn’t it? How can
they say pre-Alzheimer’s patients
are “guaranteed” to develop the
disease?
It turns out that a large,
extended family, and extended
clan of some 5,000 people who
live in and around Medellin,
Colombia, have a specific genetic
mutation that begins to cause
cognitive impairment around age
45, and full dementia within five
to six years thereafter.
The study will include 300
family members initially, some as
young as age 30. A smaller number
of people within the U.S. with
genetic markers for early-onset
Alzheimer’s will also be included.

Participants will be treated
with the drug Crenezumab,
which attacks one suspected
culprit in causing Alzheimer’s,
amyloid plaque in the brain.
While the study holds no
guarantees of success, notes
the Times, it differs from other
studies in targeting the disease
long before symptoms emerge
and aiming for prevention
rather than treatment.
Take a little pro with the anti
Recent news reports tell of a
simple antidote to a common
side effect of antibiotics.
That antibiotic side effect is
diarrhea, but a review of data
from 82 trials has established
that probiotics reduce the
incidence of antibiotic-associated
diarrhea by more than 40
percent.
Probiotics are beneficial live
micro-organisms. Where do you
get them? Well, does the name
Lactobacillus ring a bell? It’s
probably the most commonly
known probiotic. It’s the live
cultures found in yogurt, cheese

and other foods and an effective
antidote to antibiotic side effects.
A kinder, gentler colonoscopy
The Wall Street Journal reports
there’s a new twist in virtual
colonoscopy procedures.
For many people the
colonoscopy is the most dreaded
procedure in all of medicine
since it involves laxative
cleansing of the colon, followed
by a remote-camera tour.
The virtual colonoscopy, a CT
scan that eliminates the camera
probe was developed, but some
object that it still requires the
laxative cleansing.
Researchers have now devised
a program which digitally
erases colon contents. Before
their procedure, patients drink a
fluid which digitally tags colon
contents, making it invisible in
the computerized images.
Colon cancer is the secondleading cause of cancer deaths.
The CDC says if everyone over
age 50 was routinely screened,
as many as 60% of those deaths
could be prevented. +